The ORIGINAL gathering place for a merry band of Three Percenters. (As denounced by Bill Clinton on CNN!)

Monday, May 23, 2016

Valediction of a Three Percenter by Mike Vanderboegh

"Valediction -- noun, An act of bidding farewell; a leave-taking; a speech or statement made as a farewell." -- Merriam Webster Dictionary

(Note from Mike: As time gets close, I wanted to get these words out while my mind is still clear. Don't write my obituary just yet, but these words needed saying.)

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. -- Ephesians, Chapter 4, 1-6.

"I love my country, my God and my kind. I have served them all and I want no praise of song or prose." -- C.C. Sheats, Alabama Unionist

Valediction of a Three Percenter

For many years I have introduced myself as a Christian libertarian who believed in God, free men, free markets, the rule of law under the Founders' Republic, and that the Constitution extended to everyone regardless of race, creed, color or religion. As I take my leave from this existence, I must admit that the Constitution, as the Founders crafted it, is now or soon will be dead -- killed by corruption and collectivism and mostly by our own sloth and moral cowardice in opposing its enemies.

Yet if the Constitution is dead as an organizing and unifying force in this nation, the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights can never die as long as there remain free men and women who believe in the Founders' vision. This is the essence of the Three Percent, that no matter how small our numbers are -- if we remain armed and determined -- we may yet preserve the flickering flame of liberty.

However principled, you must still be clearheaded about the realities facing us. We are on the brink of chaos that will make the agonies of the former Yugoslavia look like child's play. Anyone who believes otherwise is whistling past the graveyard of history. There will be no deliverance from the rigged game of national politics. If any of our traditional liberties are to be saved it will be on a local basis of community, county and church, secured by your own efforts, your own organization, with your own friends and neighbors according to the principles enunciated by the Founders. I envisioned the Three Percent movement with that local focus in mind, as a philosophy, a discipline, of the armed citizenry. I enunciated some of these in the Three Percent Catechism. The growth of the concept has been startling. Yet many of those who claim to be "Three Percenters" haven't a clue about the principles upon which the movement was founded. While the concept of a determined minority of the armed citizenry has continued to grow, so has confusion about the mission of the Three Percent and how that mission should be carried out. I summed up the Catechism in this way:

"These four principles -- moral strength, physical readiness, no first use of force and no targeting of innocents -- are the hallmarks of the Three Percent ideal. Anyone who cannot accept them as a self-imposed discipline in the fight to restore the Founders' Republic should find something else to do and cease calling themselves a "Three Percenter."

As said in the Washington Post just this morning by B.J. Soper of the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard: "If we're going to effect change it has to be done at a local level." Anything that takes time and resources from such local efforts is a waste that we cannot afford. At its most basic and irreducible, what the Three Percent movement was designed to do was to REBUILD THE CONCEPT OF CITIZENSHIP, one citizen at a time. This begins with you, with each and every one of us. Citizenship is defined by the dictionary as "the state of being vested with the rights, privileges, and duties of a citizen." Three Percenters are insistent about all three of those components of citizenship, that is why our collectivist would-be masters are so hateful and afraid of us -- we actually take citizenship seriously, as a way of life, and not just a word. This attitude makes us scary even to folks who silently agree with what we say -- we LIVE what they CLAIM to believe. But that is the difference between a citizen and a subject, between free people and mere inhabitants of a place. If I am remembered at all, let me be known as a citizen of the Founders' Republic.

Not long after my doctor gave me the final prognosis, I was told by a reader that I would be recalled as someone "who taught us how to fight on every battlefield." It was humbling to me for him to say so, but that is what a citizen does -- he fights on every battlefield to best of his ability and resources. And if after I am gone the Three Percent movement should prove to be my living monument, it will be because it is made up of citizens of the Founders' Republic, faithful to their vision and to God's will and purpose.

God has blessed me throughout my life with many friends and supporters. I could not have accomplished anything without them. They are all truly citizens in all senses of the word. I am proud to have known you. It has been an honor. Now I leave you behind on this battlefield to carry on the fight. I wish I could stick around but God seems to have a different schedule in mind. Your futures and those of my family -- all our families, our friends -- indeed our country as envisioned by the Founders as well as our entire way of life are in your own hands, yourselves alone, subject to the will and infinite power of God. God does not promise us victory. He does command us to stand. The Founders bent their knees in prayerful supplication to the Almighty. I believe that the string of improbable events that comprised the miracle of the Revolution can be ascribed to nothing less than God's will. He may yet provide others.

But absent a miracle, your victory will be won by citizens rising to the duties and challenges of citizenship. It will be won one citizen, one locality, one community at a time -- according to the example of the Founders, organizing fellow citizens in the light of Three Percent principles.

As for me I have tried to live up to the epitaph of Chris Sheats, an Alabamian who I long ago admired as a member of my pantheon of American heroes:

"I love my country, my God and my kind. I have served them all and I want no praise of song or prose."

Mike,Scripture tells us to "finish well", you are doing just that. Thank you for this last read, it will be sent on many emails, letters, tweets and what have you. Good advice for the threeper's you leave behind. Many of us can't help but see you as a father figure, and we miss you already.God Bless,MichaelHorse-Tied Creek

MV, Thanks for the blog and clear thinking along the way. These words and images will last as long as our civilization can keep the backups refreshed (redundant RAID5's in different regions connected by fiberoptics) and the paper dry. The most inspirational was seeing you on stage belting it out after crossing State lines with contraband: nothing to lose and a nation to save. Prayers from the inland Pacific NW. -pdxr13

Hi Mike,'Not much I can say at this point in time. 'Don't know how many spins around the Sun I have left in this old carcass as the law of diminishing returns is taking its toll. For what time I have left I will "Carry on." I have my "AO" staked out and as part of the old "General Orders" we first had to learn in Boot Camp....I am,"Observing everything within sight and hearing." Take care, Buddy,Your man in Manchac,Audentes, Fortuna, Juvat,III%,skybill-out

2 Cor 5:4-8... "For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord."

Saying "goodbye" is always a hard thing to do. I'm grateful that I have the opportunity now, to tell you how much I've learned from reading your articles over the last many years. Indeed, I've converted many of your articles to .pdf files so I might continue to read them, and pass them around to my little circle.

Back in the 70s, I would have (and did) consider you my enemy, as I first went to Vietnam in 1970-71. But, by the grace of God, you saw the light, and I've come to consider you a friend I've never personally met, and a comrade-in-arms, in the struggle of FREEDOM over tyranny!

Godspeed to you, my friend. I'll look forward to meeting you on the other side.

"Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep."

What is life? How shall we have it "more abundantly"?

Life is more than a particular arrangement of organic chemistry, for a corpse is not alive. Nor is it merely the continuation of biological processes, it is now a commonplace to keep a body alive after brain death. Life is the ability to act to bring about consequences according to our desires. It is, in a word, freedom.

Freedom is not mere liberty, the absence of restrictions on our ability to act. Freedom is the connection between our desires and our outcomes, the process by which our choices effect our destiny. To be free, we must have possibilities we desire, which we can bring about through our chosen actions. That means we must have different options of actions from which to choose, and the consequences of those various actions must be different in our estimation of their desirability. It also means we must have some knowledge of which consequences will result from any action we might take. Choices, knowledge, and consequences.

Jesus said, "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." He did not say anything about having choices or consequences because we always have both, even if we sometimes want to pretend we don't. The essential component of freedom which the circumstances of mortal life does not continuously provide at all times is knowledge of which consequences will follow our choices. It is that knowledge that Jesus offers as the truth in His word.

We call the act of considering this truth "repentance". The world does not like it, but we continue to preach it. And the consequence of this choice we are also taught. "Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."

Words cannot express but I shall attempt nonetheless. I am so very very blessed beyond belief to have met you on multiple occasions, listened up close and personal (at one WA event I was perhaps 5 feet from you) to your speeches, attended your classes, even shared a meal or two. I wish you and your family every grace and comfort from God's hands during these days and certainly in the future. I too am honored to have shared your presence here on God's Earth my friend.

Death is nothing at all,I have only slipped into the next roomI am I and you are youWhatever we were to eachother, we are still.Call me by my old familiar name.Speak to me in the easy way which you always used.Put no difference in your tone.Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.Let my name be ever the household world that it always was.Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.Life means all that it ever meant.It's the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity.Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near,Just around the corner.All Is Well

Thank you for fighting on behalf of the remains of civilization and humanity.

Thank you for holding the line for civilization and humanity long enough for me to have reached my limit with our former comrades. That limit was the Gun Free School Zone Act in my case-you know why that was the final straw as well as I.

Mike, yours was one of the first blogs l found when first l came to our little world. It has seen me come and go sometimes when l didn't agree with something you said. I came to realize that old saying about opinions and yours was as valid, if not more so than mine, since you put in all the daily work. So hoping we see each other somewhere down the road and over the hill. Your comrade Joe tjbbpgoblll

Mike you are a true follower of God, a true Patriot, and a true American. When our time comes all we can do is pray we have lived a good life according to our Lord's words, serving our Fellow man and Country. Walk with God, and when the time comes, as it will for all of us, please tell Bill I love him. He died being all the things you mentioned above. With love for God and Nation. Chris

If I were allowed, I would trade places with you Mike. The only other person I ever felt that way about was my grandmother who raised me. She survived with cancer for decades (a tough road, no doubt) until a broken hip landed her in the hospital at the same time of the Waco siege. A nurse left her window open because of the smell from using the bed pan on a rainy February day. She died of pneumonia a couple days later. I would have given all I am to switch with her. And I truly feel this way about you as well. So I will offer the best I have to you by telling you some personal truths that probably mean nothing in the scheme of things but mean something to me and,I hope, God. I sat at my dog's grave every morning and night saying prayers under the 3% flag and each time for months I have ended with, 'please help Mike Vanderboegh and his family through this hard time and please give Mike the strength, courage, faith and humility he needs to allow you into him so that you can cleanse him of his sins; so that you can cleanse him of the cancer; so that you can heal his heart, mind, body and soul.' I tell you this because now I'm on the Appalachian trail and (as childishly hopeful as it may seem) I want every bit of pain I experience to be removed from you. It is by chance I saw this post because I got stuck in horrible rain and hiked about 21 miles over the last couple days in soaking wet boots and my feet couldn't carry me any longer. So I'm in a town healing my soles for a day or two. Enough time to hope in the spirit of 2 or more that everyone who reads this asks God to let my pain add to your life. I don't know what else to do other than to suplicate myself before God and hope I'm not blasphemous in asking that my actions become a living prayer for your well being and longevity.I'm not now, nor have I ever been a particularly good man, but I would give what I have so that your family and the world could keep you in it. I refuse to quit and I hope I can still see you're here the next time I'm able to get online. God bless you Mike.

Thank you for continuing to think of us even in your late hour. You are an amazing, inspiring writer, thinker, leader, and Mensch.

As patriots, as Christians, we know what we are really up against: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." [Ephesians 6:12 NIV]

You have blessed us with Matthew. I see clearly what a good father you have been. Thank you for lighting our way in this long fight. May your light always shine bright. May the Father prepare an honored place for you at his Table.

And I won't back down(I won't back down)Hey baby, there ain't no easy way out(I won't back down)Hey I will stand my groundAnd I won't back downWell I know what's rightI got just one lifeIn a world that keeps on pushin' me aroundBut I'll stand my groundAnd I won't back down(I won't back down)Hey baby, there ain't no easy way out(I won't back down)Hey I will stand my ground(I won't back down)Hey baby, there ain't no easy way out(I won't back down)Hey I won't back down(I won't back down)Hey, baby, there ain't no easy way out(I won't back down)I will stand my groundAnd I won't back downNo I won't back down - Ton Petty

May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand. Fair winds and following seas.

"I love my country, my God and my kind. I have served them all and I want no praise of song or prose."A fitting epitaph.Yours is the edge that we've needed to begin to restore Freedom to America.I can't wait for the 100 Heads Life & Casualty operation to begin to collect what is due all of usAs I've met you here on earth I look forward to meeting you again in Heaven.God Bless and Good Fortune to you and yours always.Free America!the Rifleman(somewhere in Southern Appalachian Redoubt)

Thank you for introducing yourself at the April 2014 Machine Gun Shoot at Knob Creek. It was my great pleasure to have met you. I greatly enjoyed our conversation and you made quite an impression. I was there for the well meaning fool's errand of trying to retire Senator McConnell. I've now retired from kook liberty politics and am turning my remaining efforts to What Comes Next, and you have done yeoman's work to prepare us for this difficult task. You have consistently embodied the qualities of a leader, as different from the current crop of political buffoons as night is from day. May we be worthy of your legacy.

Sir, I found your website by accident during one of the many screeching commentaries of no less than the Southern Poverty Law Center. They were so shrill, I *had* to check out Sipsey Street... and I've never looked back.

In the last four years, I've learned a great deal from you, and have come to appreciate your perspective. I'd say we're about 95% in agreement on most things.

I think it was James Clavell who made the observation that the BEST a man can do, is leave behind a legacy. Since you don't want songs or praise, let me tell you what YOU leave behind:

Fast & Furious, a scandal which seems to never die (new info from Judicial Watch exposes more dirt). I believe this will haunt the Democrats for years to come... While the scandal itself is not nearly as big as more recent examples, it precisely demonstrates the disgusting depths that a tyrannical government will go to push a totalitarian agenda.

III%, which you can look at as either an awakening or putting into words what we already knew...

Smuggling; freedom-fighter and "politician-grade" magazines... That alone, was comedy gold!

And finally, on a more personal note, your historical perspectives have given me a lot to think about, and have made me dig deeper on many other subjects. In other words, you got my off my ass, made me question a lot more stuff I used to take as a given.

IF a man in today's age can have a meaningful legacy which reflects his desire for freedom and- as you stated- CITIZENSHIP - what man could possibly have a stronger legacy than what you already have? To come close, we'd have to go back some ***240 years,*** give or take...

You have- by word AND deed- lived a life of honor and integrity not witnessed since the days of our founding fathers. [I realize that it sounds like flattery, but in fact its a condemnation of American citizens since that time... myself included, unfortunately...]

Your past sins, indiscretions, whatever you want to call them, have been MORE than compensated for.

I had hoped to meet you at some point, shake your hand, perhaps share a cold beer together... but it was not meant to be. Instead, all I can offer now is a few words I almost never say to anyone:

Thank you, Mike. You've been a source of great information, wisdom, and inspiration.I've passed on some links and so forth over the years, and I know your words have reached many more than you may know.

Donations to Mike Vanderboegh's widow

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"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.